The show begins. Butler, BYU and St. Joe's within a week -- good tests. According to ESPN, Butler has two of the top 50 players in the country, #36 and #50 --- 6'7" forward Martin with bulk and 6'2" converted SG to PG. KenPom has Butler at #44 and Hinkle Fieldhouse is a very tough place to play. Butler has big starting frontcourt which may well be a problem.

Stephens will have to take on Martin and he will face a similar challenge like he experienced against ND Colson in the Tournament.

Butler has received uneven reviews from predictions of finishing 2nd in the Big East to the middle of the pack as they lost two talented starters.

May come down to if Tigers can keep their cool at Hinkle when Butler goes on a run. I remember VCU game last year -- tough on the road.

MH was very upbeat about this Tiger team's defensive potential, to my surprise, saying they could be better than last year. This would be the game to show that, because Butler usually Ds up pretty hard, so scoring may be not so easy, especially in that building. As usual, good three-point shooting would paper over a lot of other weaknesses should they surface.

Henderson has voiced a lot of optimism about his team, something he need not do in public at this point. He has compared one of his freshmen to Ian Hummer and says another is ready to play at the college level. And, as Steve Postrel notes, he says this team can be better than last year's best-in-the-league defense. I have found him to be more reserved in the past than these comments suggest. Not sure what to make of it but if he can get a win or two in the first week we may have another special team.

Coach made very positive comments last year at Media Day and then the Tigers struggled in non-conference play. I suspect that he made the glowing comments this year as part of coach speak to get his team to have the proper mental outlook going into the season. As a fan, I would prefer that he does not set unrealistic expectations but he is probably doing it for the team. My preference is that he makes sure that the team is not over confident.

I did like to hear Cannady keep talking about playing good defense this year so Coach is working on his head.

At the end of the day, his comments to the press/public really has little bearing as long as the team is focused and ready to go. Unfortunately, that was not the case at the beginning of last year until they had St. Joe's outmuscle them and kick the Tigers' butt at Jadwin.

Difference between this year and last is stark. Last year's rotation was set through the first nine players on Day 1 of practice. Tigers were a near-unanimous choice to win the regular season Ivy title. At the time of the St. Joe's game the team had learned, literally that day and almost without warning, that Caruso was leaving the team. I believe Caruso had his own agenda regarding a return to California. This year the team will need huge contributions from first year players, in the manner of Weisz and Cannady as freshmen. Henderson knows this and is evidently comfortable with his hand. We'll find out a lot in the first 6 days.

The other mild surprise to me from early interviews was MH characterizing Much as a post player on offense. He showed a bit of that on his highlight reel but seemed very much a face-to-the-basket type. Of course, so was Hans Brase and is Alec Brennan, and they still got forced into playing back-to-the-basket offense (I think it's really inhibited Brennan, who is a natural "stretch four").

Wow, 9 man (at least!) rotation. I was surprised, too. Could MH want his other two inexperienced freshmen to have a look at the action before inserting them? Can't figure not starting Gladson, though. But, Aririguzoh is high energy and could be a game changer if he hones his skills quickly enough.

That lineup has only Cannady under 6'4" and the tallest man is the mobile Aririguzoh at 6'9", so they should be able to switch all screens. I liked the brief snippets of Aririguzoh last year, so if he's improved his offense a bit he could definitely help.

Agreed, this seems like a very versatile team on defense with the 4 perimeter starters, along with Much, Desrosiers, LeBlanc who are in that similar 6'5" to 6'7" range. Aririguzoh and Brennan are both quite mobile for bigs as well. Gladson seems to be the only one who could have trouble switching onto perimeter players, so perhaps that was the deciding factor in starting Aririguzoh.

If Aririguzoh has really improved enough to be a starter in game 1 of his sophomore year, that would be extremely impressive and a testament to his work ethic since he was thought to be a raw project coming in. Getting even more excited to see how the team looks this year

I'm surprised but not stunned. Richmond has not played that many years of basketball and was expected by people that knew his game to improve rapidly at Princeton. He plays great interior defense, which will be critical this year.

I've heard Ryan called the "sleeper" of this class (as Richmond was in last year's).